Archives For January 2015

This week on total Nerd, we are joined by Don Thatcher from Imagos Softworks & Films who gives us an inside look into Starr Mazer, Inspirations, Dreams and total greatness of the game. Starr Mazer is set to release April 2016, but there is in fact a kickstarter where you can support the SHMUP space adventure! Also we have Tsuki back in the studio after a substantial hiatus, and she lets us know about some of her adventures at PAX South. A long time listener Seth Macy calls in with Mortal Kombat X news, and Ballsrog poses a very intense question, along with a brand new rap for the haters! Tune in every Thursday from 4-6 on wwww.caveradiobroadcasting.com. Continue Reading…

This past weekend was the first PAX South. Arriving in San Antonio, one immediately notices that this is certainly Texas with people wearing big hats and strangers saying hello to you. The weather on the first morning, however, was colder than what I was expecting. After wandering around the expo hall I managed to grab a seat at the Twitch TV Town Hall. The Town Hall is an event for Twitch staff to reach out to the community to let us know what they are up to, and to take questions and suggestions on making Twitch better.

First they wanted to talk about some user experience improvements that they are working on and hope to get out soon.

Re­sub Notifications

If you stream on Twitch and manage to become popular enough to have the option of subscribers then this will help streamers recognize their most loyal fans. The option will send a notification that a user has subscribed for a certain amount of time. Such as “NerdSynq has subscribed for 3 months” Giving the broadcaster a great way to connect with their subscribers and see who has supported them and for how long.

Emotes

Twitch is also known for its Emotes, like the infamous Kappa. And it is common practice to troll new users when they ask how someone has made a certain emote. Every channel can have its own set of subscriber emotes, and there is a global stock set. This can become very confusing to users who want to enjoy the interaction and socialize with other viewers. Twitch has decided to help with that by creating tooltips on emotes that show their keyword, and source channel if it’s not a stock emote. So no more “Grey Face (no space)” baiting of new users. (Who are we kidding, it’ll keep happening anyway. Kappa)

Self Promotion

During the panel, Twitch Director of Community & Education Marcus “djWHEAT” Graham mentions how they do weekly spotlights for broadcasters to help them promote themselves and get more users. Apparently not a lot of people take advantage of this opportunity on the website. Now they want to take that a step further by creating a show showcasing new broadcasters giving them a more dedicated amount of time to show off themselves. They also want to work with partnered broadcasters with a spotlight on their weekly show also giving them a front page channel bump for a week and a blog write up. They really want to hype up their broadcasters and help them increase their viewers.

Re­Broadcast

Twitch is looking into creating video playlists that can be filled with personal or other user’s content when channels are not live. They explained that this would be great to relive a tournament play through of your favorite players or teams, and give a great outlet for speed

runs/playthrough guides of certain games. The chat experience during re­broadcasts will be live, so you can still converse with others viewing the playlist.

Dashboard

The Twitch team is looking to implement a more modular dashboard for users. This will allow everyone to customize their experience, giving access to tools, settings and more detailed statistics. They reiterated that they want to be very transparent about stats/analytics, so now users will have easier access to data such as pageviews, revenue from subscriptions, site traffic, etc.

LAG LAG LAG

The team is aware of the lag and delay on the live streams and are continuously working on improvements. One of these is ditching the flash viewer. This sounds promising, however with current browser technology, this switch is a long term project that will likely take over a year. For now, know that the average latency is about 18 seconds. Twitch has some other improvements to help lower that along the way, notably adding more datacenters (locations TBA).

Q&A

Here are a few questions asked by the attendees of the Twitch Town Hall:

What is your opinion on the state of user security (re: Swattting)

Twitch says that they do everything on their end to keep user information private and safe. However the user must also take that extra step to keep their information safe as well. Also be careful when downloading 3rd party software for streaming; there are some out there known to be unsafe. They found 2 viewerbot programs that contained Trojans.

Is there a way to follow a Team instead of an individual broadcast?

The Twitch team thinks this is a great idea and they will definitely think about it.

W​ill there be any options for affiliate links (to the Amazon product page for the game being streamed) on broadcaster pages now that you are owned by Amazon? (As a way to increase revenue for Twitch and broadcasters)?

The Twitch team is interested in the idea, and say there will be more updates with the transition since they were acquired last year. They are constantly looking for new revenue streams.

Hey Listeners!
If you haven’t had a chance you should take a look at some photos we took this weekend at PAX South. We will be talking about the trip and how the event went for its first year in San Antonio, TX during our show tomorrow. You can check out the photos on our facebook page here:

Our new show is up, and if you didn’t know we were on iTunes, like, follow, share, snapchat #yanerdme

This week we cover James trying to be Ballsrog, Corey’s birthday party, and Windows 10. Holo-lenses, marketing for the product, @Monster_Groove! Stay tuned, and check us out on Twitter, and Phone calls.

Okay, here’s an indie update for all you craving something from the forgotten corners of the toy chest. I recently got my paws on The Swappers. A fancy little gem from one of my favorite countries, Finland. Facepalm studio set this up for mac, windows, and Linux. Then curve studios went on ahead and loaded that up on Sony products which is where my black heart fell in love with it. Before I even get to the actual game I want to point out that my favorite feature is a cloud sync ability. This means I can play it on my ps4, ps3 for some reason, and the vita should I feel I need a lazy day and decide not to get out of bed or Jess has control of the TV.

So, what exactly are we looking at? A puzzle platformer set in space. I haven’t unraveled the mystery myself yet but trust me when I tell you it’s enough to keep you playing. I am eager for when I can get down to it tonight actually. I’m ashamed to say it but it’s been a while since I’ve felt that kind of intrigue and urge to find out more about the story. It’s refreshing. Every puzzle game has a convention, this one is a device that allows you to create clones that mimic your movements exactly. That wouldn’t really do the name justice though would it? No of course not. The device allows you to swap places with your clone. See? See how they did that? They let you know the key mechanic with the title. See how smart that is? It’s cause they’re from Finland.

I’m only at the beginning of the game but I want to point out that you will find out that when you are creating clones time slows down and that if you time the buttons correctly you can insta swap. The reason this is worth mention is because you are given easy puzzles to solve, but no instruction. The only way to figure it out is through experimentation. It presented a challenge and actually allowed me to figure it out.